Why council tax needs reform
...and why it won't happen - yet
If you have any interest in how much your council says it needs from you to pay to provide key services, you may be getting a sense of deja vu.
Councils have, for the best of the last three years, been at loggerheads with the government over claims that they were being seriously short changed in the face of rising demand for care services that were escalating alarmingly.
Kent County Council made no bones about its prospects, warning the government in a joint letter with Hampshire that they could be at risk of going bankrupt if there were to be no more injections of emergency funding.
In deliberately provocative fashion, the Conservative leaders of the two authorities warned the government that it was allowing two great counties “to walk into a financial disaster.”
The reality is that very little has been done to help keep councils do anything other than treading water in choppy conditions.
When it comes to how the tax might be reformed, there is not much appetite among councils at a time when their highest priority is to try and balance the books.
However, the issue of tax reform has prompted one part of the country to review the system. Wales is pushing for change with the Welsh assembly setting in train a debate about what might be better.
It has argued its reforms would address outdated inequities, create a more progressive tax structure, boost the local economy, and reduce wealth inequality.
And who could possibly disagree with that? Well, certainly not the Green group of county councillors at Kent County Council, who set out the case for change at a recent full council meeting, urging the authority’s Conservative administration to lobby the government for an overhaul.
However, while there was an all-party agreement that changes were needed, the Green party failed to secure backing for its call to write to relevant ministers to put the wheels in motion for Kent to follow Wales.
Why the reluctance? With local elections looming next year, the parties are jockeying for position in a campaign likely to be dominated by the council tax and the county council’s budget headaches.
The Conservatives are keen to portray themselves as the model of financial prudence - even in these times of austerity - and any chance they get to portray their opponents as wasteful with taxpayers’ money, they will take.